Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/336

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only for the instruction of the upper classes, should be devoted to teaching European literature and science, or should be reserved exclusively for Oriental learning; of our first Chancellor, Lord Harris, whoso government is entitled to the credit of having inaugurated nearly all those measures for the moral and material improvement of this Presidency which are now in progress; (Gentlemen, if this Convocation had been held a few months later, it would have been in my power to draw your attention to another portrait, which will soon adorn these walls, the portrait of one who will long be held in affectionate remembrance in Madras; the lamented William Morehead, the second Vice-Chancellor of this University); it was not, I repeat, in this spacious hall, surrounded by the historical associations which these pictures recall to our minds, that we assembled for our first Convocation. We met on that occasion in a small and unpretending building, ill-adapted and inconvenient for an important public gathering. The ceremonial, if such it may be called, was of the most informal and unimpressive description. The attendance was scanty. The interest in the proceedings was confined to a few.

During the ten years which have since elapsed, a great change has taken place. Most of the questions which were then so eagerly discussed have been long since settled; each one of the benevolent measures sanctioned by the Court of Directors in 1854 has been more or less vigorously carried out. The University is no longer an experiment. It is an accomplished and admitted success. Its influence is annually attested by the increasing number of under-graduates, and by the marked improvement which is taking place in the standard of school instruction throughout the Presidency;—an improvement which, is not confined to the Government schools, but which is to be found in an equally marked degree in the numerous independent institutions which have grown up and thriven of late years under the fostering influence of the grant-in-aid system and of the valuable system of examinations which this University has supplied. I find that in the first year of the University's existence the number of candidates who passed thee Matriculation Examination (and in that year two examinations were held) was 44, of whom all but 14 came from Government schools. For some years afterwards the numbers diminished instead of increasing; the fact, I believe, having been that many of; the candidates who presented themselves at the first two examinations were persons who had completed their school studies some time previously. It was